“The fundamental drivers as well as demand-supply considerations for equities point to a continued muddle through in the near term,” writes Parag Thatte, the author of the report. “However, history suggests that with the duration of the rally already in the top 10% by duration, the probability of seeing a negative shock is high.”

By the “top 10% of duration,” Thatte is referring to how long this relentless bull market has gone without feeling a pullback of at least 3% — more than four months at this point. As you can see by this chart, that’s not something we see all that often.

Other signs of an imminent shock mentioned in the note include the first-quarter buyback blackout period, fewer positive data surprises and the smart money’s move to trim long positions.

But Duke losing in the NCAA tournament isn’t the only good news to come out of this weekend. Thatte wrote in the note that he believes any near-term pullback will likely be met with buyers looking for a chance to place a timely bet on this resilient market.

“The medium-term outlook remains robust with the unfolding growth rebound having plenty of legs, while from a demand-supply point of view flow under-allocations to U.S. equities and robust buybacks remain very supportive,” he writes.

Meanwhile, our chart of the day (see below) illustrates one thing that could ease the pain of a potential short-term shock.

The chart

David Merkel of the Aleph blog says he was skeptical when he first read about the “Permanent Portfolio” back in the late 1980s, but he seems to have gained a newfound appreciation for the investing strategy after taking a deep dive into the numbers.

“Long bonds and gold are volatile, but they are definitely negatively correlated in the long run,” Merkel explains. “The Permanent Portfolio concept attempts to balance the effects of inflation and deflation, and capture returns from the overshooting that these four asset classes do.”

He grabbed data going all the way back to 1969 to see how the approach stacks up over time, and he was surprised at how well it held up. The smooth-ish gold line is the Permanent Portfolio, while the light-brown line is the portfolio without T-bills in order to leverage the idea. Here’s what it looks like:

What did he glean from his number-crunching?

“The Permanent Portfolio strategy is about as promising as any that I have seen for preserving the value of assets through a wide number of macroeconomic scenarios,” Merkel said.

Of the 46 years, the strategy gained in 41 of them, and lost in five, with the losses being small. “I don’t know about what other people think, but there might be a market for a strategy that loses ~2.6% 11% of the time, and makes 9%+ 89% of the time,” he said.

Uber’s never too far away from the spotlight these days, and this weekend was no different. The company’s No. 2 executive, President Jeff Jones, is resigning after less than a year, according to Recode. The report said the many controversies swirling around Uber, including allegations of widespread sexual harassment and bias, were “directly related” to his decision to leave.

Keep an eye on where bitcoin goes from here. The currency dumped about a fifth of its value over the weekend, crushed by an increasingly bitter divide in the developer community. Bitcoin dropped as low as $970 on Saturday, down from a high of $1,259 last week.

The quote

Scott Goldsmith

“Homo sapiens as we know them will probably disappear within a century or so, not destroyed by killer robots or things like that, but changed and upgraded with biotechnology and artificial intelligence into something else, into something different.” — Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, in comments quoted in the Guardian.

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